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Monday, August 20, 2012

Guest Post and Giveaway: Feeding the YA Monster by Tiffany Trent

Today I am happy to host Tiffany Trent, author of the YA steampunk fantasy The Unnaturalists. Her book is out now. I have my copy! Do you? If not, check out the giveaway I am hosting at the end of this post.

Please welcome Tiffany!!

Feeding the YA MonsterI
remember the exact moment I started writing YA. I remember that moment
because it had a particular feel—a particular crackle—as if the air
snapped around me and the world, which had always been slightly
off-kilter, suddenly righted itself. I’d been trying to write adult for
ten years, diligently chipping away at the same epic fantasy novel
because I thought I had to. I had many, many other ideas, but I shoved
them all aside, slavishly devoting myself like Tolkien to this
monstrosity that very nearly consumed my every waking thought (and some
of my sleeping ones, too).And
then, I was offered the chance to write a young adult series. I took
one of those half-formed ideas and threw it onto the potter’s wheel of
my imagination. And I realized that the books I loved most were what are
considered young adult by today’s standards. I realized that the books I
went back to read again and again were books I’d plucked from the
“juvenile” shelf or that my mother had carefully picked for me. The Blue
Sword. A Wrinkle in Time. The Chronicles of Prydain. The Tales of
Nedao. DragonLance.Oh,
there were others more adult I loved—the aforementioned Tolkien, The
Mists of Avalon, and so on. But it was the voice and pace of young
adult—a world I’d not explored for many years—that just fell into place
with a click for me. I
don’t know why it never occurred to me before. Maybe I wasn’t aware of
it as a possibility. I was very embarrassed for a long time about my
love of genre and, after a few stings in various writing classes, wrote
science fiction and fantasy in secret. But on the day when I was
offered the chance to write YA, it seemed like all my nebulous long toil
solidified into a path I could actually walk instead of a bog intent on
drowning me. It
isn’t outside the realm of possibility that I’ll one day write
something adult—I’ve written a few adult short stories—but YA feels very
much like home. And YA science fiction and fantasy are definitely my
favorite rooms in the house. I think Patricia McKillip says it best
here:

“I
write fantasy because it’s there. I have no other excuse for sitting
down for several hours a day indulging my imagination. Daydreaming.
Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places. Imagination is the
golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be
ignored. Making it tell the same tale over and over again makes it thin
and whining; its scales begin to fall off; its fiery breath becomes a
trickle of smoke. It is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something
nonexistent; there are few details of daily life and its broad range of
emotional context that can’t be transformed into food for the
imagination. It must be visited constantly, or else it begins to become
restless and emit strange bellows at embarrassing moments; ignoring it
only makes it grow larger and noisier. Content, it dreams awake, and
spins the fabric of tales. There is really nothing to be done with such
imagery except to use it: in writing, in art. Those who fear the
imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something
monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who
do have no choice.”

And
that too is why I write YA. It’s only wise to feed the golden-eyed
monster what it wants. Life is much more pleasant that way.